Getting to Know...William McGreevey

August 11, 2009

Recently, Bill McGreevey, Jennifer Huang and Bernhard Liese taught at the NHS- sponsored Georgetown-Fudan Summer Program on Global Health, which ran from June 2-27, 2009, at Fudan University Medical School in Shanghai, China. The program offered training for 12 Georgetown University students. The students completed INTH-477, Changing Disease Patterns, and INTH-411, Political Economy of Health and Development in Asia, both of which are offered through NHS.

GUMC sat down with Bill McGreevey, associate professor of international health, following the trip to learn more about the exceptional program.

What prompted you to offer this program to Georgetown University students?
Bernhard Liese, who is chair of the Department of International Health, suggested we prepare the course during the fall term of the 2008-2009 academic year, and we began to recruit students in January 2009, resulting in 12 students joining us this year.

Did the students receive credit for the courses?
The courses are now officially part of the Georgetown University curriculum; students earned three credits for each course, for a total of six, all of which counted towards their graduation from Georgetown.

Did you use any special type of technology to teach the courses?
We relied on extensive PowerPoint presentations and were able to download key journals, including a special issue of The Lancet about the health system in China. For the epidemiology course, there were distinguished Chinese lecturers from Fudan University.

Did you experience a language or cultural barrier? If so, how did you overcome the obstacle?
We were fortunate to have three students who are bilingual among our group, and we counted on the unfailing generosity of Jennifer Huang, associate professor of international health, to pave the way for us in our day-to-day interactions with taxi drivers, restaurant owners, and the many smiling people we encountered on the street.

Were you able to take any field trips?
We took the students to visit central, intermediate, and local levels of Shanghai’s Center of Disease Control and the research center of the Shanghai Bureau of Health. After the trips, we followed-up with discussions on cultural and political implications of health services provision. Our students were quick to understand the basic business etiquette in those settings and witnessed how faculties work with their Chinese counterparts.

What was the highlight of the trip?
It comes in two parts. First, with just a dozen students, I was able to conduct tutorial meetings with students to discuss papers they would write, group analyses of specific Chinese provinces, and assessments of the costs and benefits of key policy choices in the Chinese health care environment. Secondly, I was able to briefly cite and describe their findings to our host, Professor Hu Shanlian, at the group seminar. It was a great pleasure to see the unfolding of such capacity of our students.

Thank you for sharing your story about your trip to China. We look forward to hearing about your return trip next year!

(Photo: NHS Professor Jennifer Huang, Bernhard Liese, chair of the
Department of International Health, and NHS Professor William
McGreevey attended a meeting at the Bureau of Health in Shanghai,
China, during the four-week academic program they ran for
undergraduate students, some of whom are seated in the background.)



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